Prisoners and Corporations in the US are a part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands.
The Associated Press did a sweeping two year investigation. They found goods linked to prisoners wind up in our food supply chain from everything from Frosted Flakes cereal, Ball Park hot dogs, to Gold Medal Flour and Coca-Cola and Riceland Rice.
The (AP) Associated Press led a 2 year investigation into a hidden path to America’s dinner table beginning in Angola, LA. This unlikely source -a former Southern Slave Plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison. It has 6,300 prisoners and a staff of 1,800 including correction officers, janitors, maintenance workers and wardens.
Due to its large population it has been given the name “A Gated Community.” The prison’s nickname is “Alcatraz of the South.”
Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all! After driving down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by the Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chain of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart, and Cargill.
Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to an AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.
They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full time workers, when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.
The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of an unimaginable array of products found in most American kitchens. They are on the shelves of almost every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. Some are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.
Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor! It is completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned— Except as a punishment for a crime. In other words prisoners.
The clause is currently being challenged on the federal level and from some state constitutions. About a dozen states are expected to reach the ballot.
Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane more than 150 years ago. Some of the present day images look eerily similar to the past. In Louisiana, which has one of the country’s largest incarceration rates, men on the “farm line” still stoop over crops stretching far into the distance.
Willie Ingram picked everything from cotton to okra during his 51 years in the state penitentiary, better known as Angola! During his time in the fields, he was overseen by armed guards on horseback and remembered seeing men, working with little or no water, passing out in triple-digit heat. Some days he said workers would throw their tools in the air to protest, despite knowing the potential consequences. They would come maybe four in a truck, shields on their faces, billy clubs, and they’d beat you, handcuff you and beat you again!
Ingram, who received a life sentence for a crime he did not commit. He was told he would serve 10 1/2 years and avoid a possible death penalty, but it wasn’t until 2021 that a sympathetic judge finally released him at 73 years old, 51 years later!!
Almost every state has some kind of a farming program, agriculture represents a small fraction of the overall prison workforce. The U.S. prison labor from all sectors has turned into a multibillion-dollar empire that extends far beyond the classic images of prisoners stamping license plates, working on road crews or battling wildfires. There are about 2 million people in the prison system and disproportionately more people of color.
While most critics do not believe all jobs should not be eliminated, but say they incarcerated people should be paid fairly, treated humanely, and that all work should be voluntary.
In addition to tapping a cheap, reliable workforce, companies sometimes get tax credits and other financial incentives. incarcerated workers also typically aren’t covered by the most basic protections and cannot file complaints about poor working conditions. These prisoners often work in industries with severe labor shortages, doing some of the country’s dirtiest and most dangerous jobs!
While prison labor seeps into the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct. Huge commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge- which together post annual revenues of more than $400 billion- and in recent years scooped up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers!!!
The companies listed above when questioned by AP say they have cut back but because of the lack of transparency it is difficult to know what the real truth is unless you see for yourself.
Much gratitude to AP for this investigation and investing 2 years of time and effort to uncover the treatment of prisoners and how they are used for profit by these greedy corporations.
I will be doing a series of articles on this topic and how child labor is being exploited as well by these wealthy, greedy and uncaring corporations!
Stay tuned,
Lori Pica